Sunday, December 20, 2009

Update 8:00 PM - Issue is resolved thanks to the hard work of Todd and Aaron from the Showit Dev team.

7:45 PM - If you have attempted to log into your Showit account in the last few hours you most likely received an "Email and password do not match" message. We are aware of the issue and know that it is also affecting the GETit store and Help Desk system. We are currently (as in right now) working with the company that hosts our user data.

This does not affect your public website in any way and is not related to our hosting servers with Amazon. Please check back here for more updates.

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Showit +Site is rockin! We are super excited about this feature and cannot wait to see the killer sites that will be published. A +Site allows you to create amazing custom sites for your clients...and publish them right off your domain name.

Did you know 57% of brides are creating a wedding website? We want you to be able to adopt this trend and ensure their website looks as good as your work. Don't settle for your stellar images being featured on a less than stellar website.

Maybe the best thing about this feature is it's non-competitive! If your main website is not built with Showit, and you like it that way, you can still take advantage of Showit +Site because it publishes to a subdomain.

Check out the some of the Showit +Sites that have already been created!

We know you will be stoked at this feature because it is so easy to do. The +Site is a completely new site inside your existing subscription. Which means as long as you have a Pro account you can start creating unlimited really awesome client websites that showcase your work in an amazing way.

Here are a few other sweet facts about Showit +Sites

Since the +Site is on your domain when it's passed around all over their Facebook page and blog, you get some Google juice! In other words good for your SEO.

If the client wants to have the website, you just need to export the Style Group and tell them to sign up with a Showit account. Send them the exported file to import into their website and now they have complete Control of the site!

Since ShowitPRO offers unlimited pages you can create as many +Sites as you want.

We've added a bunch of really awesome +Site Style Groups to make getting started really easy

We are so excited about this we recorded a special rendition of The Turtles' So Happy Together. But DJ had so much emotion tied up in better SmugMug integration he kept breaking down during recording...so you get this blog post instead.

Showit v2.2 includes a BUNCH of new SmugMug features that have us grinning ear to ear (with the exception of DJ weeping with joy).

Support for Unlisted Galleries!You can now select images from Unlisted Galleries in SmugMug! You just need to authorize Showit to access your SmugMug account. You can do this from the new SmugMug Setup... located in the Site toolbar menu.

Link Your Media Library Directly to SmugMugYou can now link the Showit Media library directly to your SmugMug account. This means no more duplicate uploading of images. If you have it in SmugMug you can bring it into Showit!

SmugMug Image PreferencesLast but not least, you can also set the default size for large, medium, and thumbnail images brought in directly from SmugMug, ensuring you get maximum speed optimization for your site.

To truly express how excited we are about the new +Site Style Groups, we recorded a song called A Dozen Christmas Presents to the tune of The 12 Days of Christmas. But, since every day was the same gift and there were 18 of them the song was just really boring and seemed to go on forever...

Anyway, to make sure you get your +Sites rockin' we added some HOT new Style Groups. Make sure to check them out! ... and if you like these as much as we do then a quick edit makes them perfectly usable for a complete website design!

With a little help from The Amazing Mumford, we've updated the existing Photo Gallery widgets and added a really sweet new Simple Gallery! We also added Image Captions so you can add your creative magic to naming and describing your images!

New Simple GalleryThe Simple Gallery pretty much describes itself, but it has an unlimited number of uses. It displays a single image with no thumbnails and offers tons of options. One of the coolest things about this new gallery is the images are linkable! Here are three cool ways you can use this new gallery...but we're sure you'll think of more!

1. Works awesome as an auto-rotating image in banners2. A Gallery landing page can now have rotating images from each individual gallery, and still link to the the Slideshow or page with the full screen gallery.3. Cool way to highlight "other people" on your website and link out to their website

Display Gallery Timing UpdateWe had received feedback the images in the Gallery Display were not always transitioning smoothly, so the dev team did some magic and "POOF"...it's all good now. (I'm pretty sure technically that's exactly how it happens...)

Unlisted SmugMug Gallery SupportAnd by popular demand we performed a special trick which allows you to link to Unlisted SmugMug Galleries! You'll need click the "Login" button and then "Authorize SmugMug" to allow Showit to access your SmugMug account. All your unlisted images magically appear.

Add Captions to Your ImagesNow you can and words to your photos! WORD!

Create Captions for the images in your Photo Galleries. Your Captions show up by creating a Text Area that links to your Gallery channel, and automatically transitions the text with images when viewing your page.

Okay, so technically the Earth is still 24,901.55 miles around but it is totally going to feel smaller thanks to Showit Rapid Edge Hosting.

With Showit Rapid Edge Hostingall of your site content is served from edge locations all over the world. This has the advantage that your initial site load is quicker because the Flash player, site info, and fonts are all loaded from these edge locations along with all your site content.

All this being said people sometimes say "Showit is slow" but that is like saying "Photoshop makes bad pictures" because Showit simple gives people the freedom to create a slow website or a fast website and sometimes they make slow ones so don't forget that you always want to optimize what's on your pages for the fastest loading times.

Presently content is being distributed to these edge locations.

United States

Ashburn, VA

Dallas/Fort Worth, TX

Los Angeles, CA

Miami, FL

Newark, NJ

Palo Alto, CA

Seattle, WA

St. Louis, MO

Europe

Amsterdam

Dublin

Frankfurt

London

Asia

Hong Kong

Tokyo

As noted in the orange text there are some things to understand before enabling this feature. Check out the Showit Wiki for all the details.

We feel like we do a pretty good job supporting our Showit users, but we know there is always room for improvement. With Showit v.2.2 we have new integrated support to make getting help and tracking your tickets easier than ever. Just click on Help in the tool bar and then Request Help...

From right inside Showit you can create a new ticket and check the status of any of your open tickets!

NOTE: Support for all other Showitfast products will still be handled from the existing support page.